Jes Staley

Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley has used a speech at the Kings College in London to say that any negative impact of Brexit will be so short-term it will be overshadowed by London’s longer-term staying power.

The Banking mogul said yesterday that the opportunities available, including cutting Brussels bureaucracy, would help make the UK a more competitive place to do business after leaving the EU.

He asked the audience to look beyond the short-term economic issues and look towards these long-term opportunities:

The question is, down the road – 10, 20 years from now – will the flexibility of managing a modern economy, having the power centre in the UK and in London for the British economy, will that then become a competitive advantage?

Jes Staley

However, Staley, who has been optimistic about Brexit for a long time, did stress that we cannot be naive to the short-term economic issues saying that “for some period of time, the GDP of the UK will probably grow at a slower rate than it might otherwise have grown save for Brexit.”

But he did downplay the impact of these shortcoming and said that it will be incremental and is likely to be so small that it won’t make the headlines, despite what is heard in the media.

Staley was more concerned about the UK keeping up with the US, where deregulation and tax cuts were making New York a stronger rival.

In some ways bigger than Brexit is the decision of the US government to drop tax rates down to 20 per cent,” he said. “There’s been a pullback on some of the regulatory intensity in the US and we feel that as well.

Jes Staley

If the UK is going to make Brexit a success, there needs to be a renewed focus on how to make it a success and compete on the global stage.